


Aphelion

by spheniscidae (orphan_account)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Future, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 02:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7783114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/spheniscidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> I don’t care, </i> Tobio had been about to say, which he realizes probably wouldn’t have been the greatest choice of words when Hinata straightens and blurts out, “I’m in love with you.”</p><p>(Alternatively - there’s a future, there’s an impasse, and Kageyama Tobio is not the only thing Hinata Shouyou grows to forget.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aphelion

**Author's Note:**

> //whispers// i'm kind of new at this fanfiction thing so.

The first time he sees Hinata Shouyou, it is in a cold hallway with his future laid out before him in steps and shouted words.

  
*

  
_If you’re the king that rules the court, I’ll have to defeat you,_ the boy with orange hair his team has just beaten yells from the stairs. _And be the last one standing._

The sharpness of his challenge is lost in his stubborn tears. Hinata Shouyou is a silhouette against the sunset, short figure outlined in clumsy smudges of red and gold, a shining thing before Tobio’s shadow. His vow rings in Tobio’s ears. What kind of person shouts his thoughts like this, he finds himself wondering, bitterness and loss for the entire world to hear? What kind of person pledges a grudge against someone he has barely met? Tobio has half a mind to scoff and turn away, but something in the boy’s voice pins him to his place. He raises his head to meet his eyes.

For a moment, he’s taken aback by the determination in them, tear-glossed yet adamant. The boy seems like he truly means it—like Tobio’s win against him has just swept away his entire world. And perhaps it has. Tobio had played in the match, he’d seen the boy’s sheer will and desire to win; his love for the sport threatening to spill over his actions and his resolve to push through until the end. The words the boy has just spoken only add this impression. There are few like him; with his single-mindedness, it’s not impossible for him to make good on that promise or die trying. With his play, he could...

_Stand on the court and deserve every bit of it._

So he snarls, _become strong,_ and watches the resolute line of the boy’s shoulders tense; feels his oath etched and outlined in every line of his limbs, and walks away.

Somewhere he’s aware that he may have just made himself an enemy, inspired hate instead of purpose, but he can’t bring himself to regret his actions.

Tobio goes to sleep that night with the intention of forgetting everything about the boy and his defiant promise.

(He remembers, of course. And it’s ironic—but, he realizes much later, only natural—that they would meet again, this time on the same side of the net, as allies, as teammates.

As partners.)

  
*

  
Soon Hinata stands before him once more and gives the same vow. Tobio looks up at him, edged in dusk and with a palpable sense of déjà vu, and wonders what it is about this time that makes it feel different from their first confrontation on the stairs.

He receives his answer with Hinata’s promise of _even if it takes ten or twenty years._

The _forever_ is unspoken, but it’s there.

  
*

  
“Hey,” Hinata says to him suddenly, in their second year, when they’re panting and spread out on the ground from their usual race to the gym. “Do you believe in fate?”

Tobio blinks the sweat from his eyes and turns. “What,” he says.

Hinata sits up, with some effort, and faces him. His face is flushed from all the running and his bright hair sticks to his forehead. “Do you believe in fate,” he repeats, and maybe it’s Tobio’s imagination, but his cheeks seem to colour a bit more.

“What.”

Hinata groans and flops back onto the ground. “Kageyama-kun,” he wails. “Don’t make me say it again. It’s embarrassing.”

Tobio scowls, reaches out and unceremoniously hits him across the head. “If it’s embarrassing, then why did you ask in the first place, dumbass?”

“Ow,” Hinata sulks. He rubs the side of his face. “I asked you because I wanted to know, obviously.”

“Why would you want to know something like that?”

“I was curious!”

“Why would you be curious?”

“Stop asking me questions! Just answer!”

Tobio sighs and massages his temples. “I don’t know. That’s my answer.”

“That’s a dumb answer, Kageyama.”

He flushes and hits Hinata again, ignoring his whine. “Well, you can’t have expected me to have thought about that, idiot! Do you believe in it?”

It’s a rhetorical question; he hadn’t been looking for an answer. Yet Hinata immediately straightens to look him in the eye. “I do,” he says quietly.

Tobio stares. Hinata looks strangely serious, eyes dark and expression unreadable. It’s such an unfamiliar look on him, on the usually loud and energetic boy that he involuntarily catches his breath. The air between them grows thick and heavy. It makes Tobio starts to wonder if there’s something more behind his answer; something he’s left unsaid.

Then the illusion breaks. Hinata grins at him, full and blinding, and flops back down on the ground. “I’ve been thinking about it, a little,” he says conversationally. “I mean, a lot of things have happened, and sometimes you just gotta wonder if it’s all for a reason, you know? I guess it’s been bothering me for a while now.” He shifts restlessly in the grass until his ankle hits Tobio’s bare knee. Amber eyes glance at him, curious. “Don’t you consider these things once in a while?”

Tobio opens his mouth. Closes it. “Sure,” he says lamely.

Hinata seems unbothered by his gruff response and exhales, reaching his arms up as if trying to cradle the sun like one would hold a volleyball. He flexes his fingers, expression thoughtful. “I’ve just been wondering...” he starts. He chews his lip. “About the club, and everything. If I hadn’t seen that match on TV when I was little...if I hadn’t gathered enough players to go to the tournament...if I hadn’t went to the bathroom before the game, even.” He shoots Tobio a lopsided smile then continues. “If I hadn’t done even one of those things, I wouldn’t be here today. We wouldn’t be able to play like we do. It’s overwhelming, when you think about it. But...”

He drops his arms and rolls over to face Tobio, ankle bumping against his skin. “I’m glad I can be where I am now.”

For the second time in an hour, Tobio is at a loss for words. Hinata’s face is serious again. His eyes stare imploringly into Tobio’s, making him feel the full, pressing weight of his words, and suddenly he thinks he gets what Hinata’s talking about. Everything from their first meeting, their first match, until now—when Tobio thinks about it, it’s really only felt like things fitting into place. Like all of it was inevitable. Their first shouted promise, the first game they’d played together, the first time they’d stood on the same court like a memory and a dream—

And for all that he knows, the coincidence of their reunion at Karasuno wasn’t exactly a coincidence after all, and Hinata, when he’s by Tobio’s side on the court, feels a lot like he belongs there.

Volleyball has always been important to Tobio, but it’s never been _this_ , he realizes.

Hinata’s voice pulls at him. “You know what I mean?”

Tobio turns. Hinata’s eyes are bright; their breath mixes and swirls together in the heat of the afternoon. “Yeah,” he says, softly, simply. Because it’s the truth.

“Yeah.”

  
*

  
They lose to Seijou in the finals of their third year.

Tobio clenches his hands, fists them in the fabric of his shorts. He’s in the bathroom after excusing himself from his devastated teammates. His eyes sting; with stubborn finality he wipes them and stands. Better to act the strong one, as the captain. Better to conceal his emotions for the mental state of the team. He’s their leader, after all.

The thought doesn’t stop him from twisting his hands around the faucet until they turn white.

He stares into the mirror. It had been a good match, at least. They had taken the first set, too—with ecstatic delight and blind eagerness to go to nationals once more, to repeat the history of Tobio’s first year. Then Seijou had retaliated with the second set. The final match might have been the most intense Tobio’s ever experienced. Every player on the court focused, every executed play driven with utmost care—at the very least, Tobio had been able to shake their hands and say “good game” with no falseness in his words.

Even so, it was their last year, wasn’t it?

He should have done something more to make it count. Even if they had to lose—and they did, they hadn’t even been able to manage a deuce in the end—he could’ve said something, anything, to turn their last loss into an accepting one. Tobio was the captain, wasn’t he? He remembers Daichi in their first year, always with something to say, words of encouragement to offer. Tobio wasn’t like that. He leads his team with grudging consent at best and fumbling negligence at worst. Any of the other three in his year could have done better, even cold, sarcastic Tsukishima or mild Yamaguchi, or—

The door opens.

Tobio doesn’t turn from his position bent over the sink, because there’s only one person it could be.

A hand is laid on his shoulder. “Hey.”

He exhales and releases his death grip on the faucet. Hinata is visible behind him in the mirror, expression solemn. No hint of concern can be found tucked in his features; they’ve known each other too long for that.

“Kageyama,” Hinata’s reflection says to him.

He bows over the sink and says back, “it was our last chance.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hinata nod. There’s no use denying it. He can count the days until their inevitable retirement of the club on his fingers and toes. Maybe they’ll stay, to coach the underclassmen a bit, but afterward it’s only exams and graduation and university.

And goodbye.

“Stop,” Hinata insists softly, like he can read Tobio’s mind, and maybe he can. “Stop beating yourself up over it, you always do that.”

He lies, “I don’t.”

“You do. And stop it. Our kouhai will get them back next year.”

“Right,” Tobio says, because there’s nothing he can really say to an empty promise like that, then rushes on, “did you see? Oikawa and Iwaizumi were there. In the stands. After the game, they were celebrating...I think they were really happy. Seijou hasn’t gone to the nationals since...”

Hinata’s expression is nothing short of unwavering as he replies, “That’ll be us next year.”

“Right,” Tobio says again, and they fall back into silence.

Eventually Hinata claps him on the shoulder and forces him to stand. “Come on. Wouldn’t want to keep our team waiting, would you, Captain?”

Usually he hates it when people call him that—it falls far too close to _King_ than he prefers—but he doesn’t mind it with Hinata, because he knows there’s no bite behind the word. He takes Hinata’s offered hand and lets him pull them to the door.

Just as the door swings open, Hinata purses his mouth and turns. “I mean it, alright?” he says, and gives a bitter smile. “Even if it takes ten or twenty years.”

This time the unvoiced word is loud and clear, and Tobio only nods as they step through the door.

He doesn’t doubt Hinata or his promises.

And he doesn’t think he ever will.

  
*

  
Which is why he supposes he should’ve known, maybe, even then.

  
*

  
When it comes, graduation is a blur of faces and names and at the end of the day Tobio takes the time to stand in the middle of the courtyard clutching his diploma just so he can take a much-needed breath. The air is cool for March, crisp and refreshing; it gently tousles his hair and stirs a vague feeling of nostalgia in his gut.

Before he can place it exactly, though, there’s a voice.

“Kageyama.”

Tobio turns automatically. Hinata stands before him, hands clutched at his side, wearing an expression so similar to grim resolve that it makes him want to laugh. Figures he’d want to talk, they hadn’t really gotten a chance to properly in all the rush of today; and figures that he’d face Tobio like the teammate and rival he will always be. The feeling in his gut intensifies. It takes a moment to realize that it’s longing, which makes him feel disgustingly sentimental as he waits for Hinata to speak.

He never does, though, just fidgets and stares at his shoes.

Eventually it’s Tobio who breaks the silence when it stretches too long. “Oi,” he says. “Dumbass, what’s wrong?”

The insult slips easily from his lips. It’s so common these days that it loses its initial meaning—Hinata almost treats it like a second name, doesn’t react to it at all. Granted, that’s probably why Tobio starts to develop a gradually rising sense of alarm when Hinata flinches so hard at the word he stumbles back a step.

“Hey,” he says, voice softer this time. “What’s wrong?” Tobio reaches him in long strides and places a hand on his shoulder. “Hinata?”

Hinata looks up with wide eyes at his name. His face is red, Tobio notes. Perhaps he’s come down with something. He frowns when the usually-loud boy continues with his silence. “Are you sick? If you have something to say, just say it, I don’t—”

 _I don’t care_ , he’d been about to say, which he realizes probably wouldn’t have been the greatest choice of words when Hinata straightens and blurts out, “Kageyama, I’m in love with you.”

His body goes cold.

The wind grows stronger and combs across their skin, blows Hinata’s orange locks away from his forehead so that Tobio can see his eyes, so huge Tobio’s reflection is clear and gaping in the smooth brown.

_I’m in love with you._

Not _I like you_ , not _thank you for everything_ , not even _I love you_. Hinata’s said it in a way that leaves no doubt as to what he means, even for someone as dense as Tobio. There’s no misinterpreting his words, now. No clapping him on the back and saying, _thanks, I like you too, see you around_ and leaving it at that.

Tobio’s starting to find it difficult to think over all the sirens blaring in his head, so he just continues to stare open-mouthed at Hinata and hope that he’s heard wrong somehow.

Obviously, he hasn’t.

Hinata turns even redder than he already was and stammers, “I-I mean—I didn’t, um,” which doesn’t exactly answer any of the million or so questions rolling around haphazardly in Tobio’s mind, although from what he can tell Hinata probably hadn’t meant to say that. Or if he did, he had a very different way of going about it envisioned.

The thought of that, of how Hinata had most likely _planned_ to tell him, had considered _how_ to—had apparently been in love with him for long enough to not just stick to a simple _I like you_ and _please consider me_ —makes Tobio’s head buzz. He should do something. Say something, before Hinata runs away, which is growing more and more probable judging by the tremble of his shoulder under Tobio’s hand. But his mind’s still reeling from the sudden confession.

So he does the first thing he can think of by pure instinct, which is to strike Hinata on the head and yell, “you _idiot_ ”.

Then his thoughts catch up with his actions and his hand falls. He takes a step back.

Hinata recoils, looking as stunned as Tobio feels, eyes still impossibly huge. There’s a red mark on his cheek growing darker by the second where Tobio hit him with more force than usual in his disoriented state. For a while they stare at each other.

Then Hinata’s eyes fill with angry tears and his hand flies up to cover the bruise on his face. “What the _hell_ ,” he shouts, voice breaking, and stalks forward. He smacks his hands on Tobio’s chest and pushes; there’s unexpected strength in his small figure and he ends up on the ground looking up at Hinata. He’s crying, Tobio realizes, and feels a sick twist of nausea in his gut. He’s crying with tears dripping down his chin and splattering on Tobio’s shirt and ten times as much hurt than anger in his eyes.

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Hinata sobs, and sprints away. Tobio can only look at his rapidly retreating figure; shock and regret root him to his place.

  
*

  
I’m sorry, he remembers thinking. Sorry, sorry. Sometime in the middle, the words cease to be Hinata’s and turn into his own.

The feeling is sharp, like a broken record slowly and stubbornly revolving in his mind.

  
*

  
He doesn’t see Hinata after that. Tobio goes home in a daze, barely remembers to lock the door after he gets home, then promptly goes up to his room and collapses on the bed. Hinata’s tear-streaked face lingers hauntingly at the back of his mind. _I’m sorry_ , he’d said. Something in the way he’d said it tells Tobio that he never expected him to accept his feelings.

But would he have, if Hinata’s sudden confession hadn’t completely taken him by surprise?

Tobio racks his brain for an answer, but can’t find one. It’s hard to admit, but Hinata—Hinata who he’s always been able to read like an open book, Hinata who is just as much a partner off the court than on it—has somehow managed to reduce Tobio’s thoughts to mush with a single sentence.

He still can’t process it. Hinata’s feelings for him. How long has he been hiding them? Has he really been hiding them at all? Tobio’s been confessed to before, for reasons he still can’t comprehend, and each time it’s like a slap to the face, but none so much as this one. For one, they’re both boys, though Tobio has never really cared about that sort of stuff. And Hinata’s his friend. Friends don’t think of each other that way.

 _But do they_ , something whispers in Tobio’s mind. He does his best to push it aside. But not before he spends a few seconds considering, considering the way Hinata had looked after his confession, cheeks pink and mouth agape, and the way his tears had knotted Tobio’s stomach awfully like after a lost match, and how his words had left Tobio’s entire body tingling and warm in that half a second before he’d _hit_ him and called him an idiot—

And he thinks, distinctly, _what have you done now._

  
*

  
After an awkward dinner in which his mother had looked at him worryingly and asked him if he was alright about twenty times, Tobio trudges up to his room and slams the door.

The colorful pamphlets on his desk catch his eye, and his stomach drops.

They’re for university, his parents had said, after pushing them into his hand. There are maybe fifteen lying innocently in front of him. He remembers how he’d gone through each of them with Hinata, listing their top choices and discarding the ones that didn’t have a good volleyball team, lying lazily on his floor a week before graduation. Tobio walks over to his desk and snatches up the list they’d made. Most of them are written in Hinata’s large, curving script, because he’s the one who had taken up responsibility to write their options down.

He feels like he’s going to throw up.

It was an unmentioned rule, that they’d be together. Both of them knew they would. They’d have to be. Have to choose one they mutually agreed on, study for the entrance exams together, get in, stand on the court side by side again—

Tobio crumples the sheet.

(Later, with pressure from his parents, he chooses one at random off the list and spends his days holed up in his room cramming in preparation. The nights are exhausting, with random formulas and phrases blurring before Tobio’s eyes, but the workload takes his mind off other things. Other things, like how Hinata still hasn’t appeared or answered any of his calls or texts or the five or so messages he’d left before giving up and waiting. Other things like the terrible image of hurt and betrayal in Hinata’s eyes.

Other things, like how the ache he feels in his heart might be a sliver too strong for losing just a friend—even one that he’s known as long and done as much together as Hinata, at that.

Tobio throws himself headfirst into his studies. And it’s hard and tiring and mentally draining, but a sufficient enough distraction from the hollow feeling in his chest.)

  
*

  
He doesn’t see or hear from Hinata over the break, either.

  
*

  
Later, he stands before the gates of his new university with his acceptance letter in hand and tries to conjure up excitement or satisfaction or pride.

All he manages is a burning sensation at the back of his throat.

  
*

  
The first practice for the volleyball team comes two weeks into his classes, and Tobio walks into the gym with something terrible eating at his mind. It’s relentless, a _what-if_ that scares him so much he’s hit with the urge to turn and walk back out and very nearly does.

But at the door he takes a breath and stays. He’s been through so much; rejection, fear, countless matches and tournaments with much more than baseless concerns riding on his back. To let something like this stop him is stupid.

But it’s not, he realizes, twenty minutes into the practice. It’s not.

Because he sees Hinata _everywhere._

Tobio bends to stretch and sees Hinata’s movements in another player’s short figure, catches a ball and imagines Hinata yelling for a toss at the other side of the gym, can even hear Hinata’s voice mixed in with the frequent choruses of “nice receive”. It’s a bit of a crisis, Tobio thinks faintly. Who knew even volleyball would have to turn out like this. Except he knew, of course, this is exactly what he’d been worried about this morning, and now it turns out he knows himself better than he would have thought.

The breaking point is when he makes a toss, fast and hard and just in the way Hinata usually likes it, waits for the satisfying smack of a hand against the ball and the excited whoop that is sure to follow but hears nothing save for the terrible sound of it hitting the ground.

He turns, and for a moment is back in his Kitagawa Daiichi uniform with his teammates’ glares cutting into his back.

Tobio struggles to breathe. It’s not like that anymore, he reminds himself. Now—now what? Now he’s got a new team all over again where still no one can hit his reckless toss, because the one person who’d been able to isn’t there anymore. Now he’s back at square one.

He inhales shakily. _Get it together,_ he reminds himself, and stutters out something resembling an apology to the spiker he’d been paired with.

“It’s no problem,” the guy says, waving a hand around. “Though, that toss was really something else. Can you imagine what it would be like if someone could actually hit it?” He laughs, and Tobio forces himself to laugh along, as if the idea is simply ridiculous, completely unfathomable. As if there hadn’t really once been someone who _could._

At the end of the evening he bows to the coach, gives another awkward apology, and hands in his club resignation form.

The coach accepts it. He’s a middle aged man not unlike Ukai and doesn’t bother to hide his skepticism when he raises an eyebrow at Tobio. “Something go wrong with the practice?”

“No,” Tobio mumbles. “I just—um, I think I might need some time off.” He winces at the pathetic excuse and opens his mouth to explain, to add something, but comes up empty. It’s not exactly like he can tell him the truth, but he can’t bring himself to lie either.

“Is the training too hard?”

“No,” he says again.

“Are the members harassing you?”

Tobio splutters something akin to _no_ again, and the coach sighs.

“Then I honestly don’t see what the problem is,” he says, and for a moment Tobio panics, thinks he’s going to shove the form back at him and demand fifty laps around the campus or something for being such a coward. He would deserve it, probably.

But the coach continues. “Since you insist, though, you can stop attending practices.”

Tobio lets go of the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He thanks him, awkwardly, and is about to leave when the coach stops him again with a hand on his shoulder.

He tilts his head at Tobio, eyes piercing—considering—and says, “you really don’t think you can handle it?”

Tobio bristles. He’s about to protest, say that this has nothing to do with the training or the club members or the practice or whatever, but then realizes that the coach knows who he is. Of course he knows Tobio. His team back at Karasuno hadn’t been anything to laugh at, he’d even been stopped once or twice after matches by scouts, and he’d included all of his experiences in his application. No doubt they would make note of it and inform the coach.

No doubt he’d have his expectations for Tobio, which most likely did not come in the form of a stammered apology and a resignation form.

So he hesitates, starts to wonder if maybe he could try again somehow, next week, but then the coach’s eyes shift and turn into Hinata’s—wide and brown and tear-filled and heartbroken—and he exhales and admits, “yes.”

_There’s too much of him._

The coach looks disappointed but releases his arm. “Alright,” he says, “but after your ‘time off’—” he makes air quotes around the words and Tobio flushes— “we’d be happy to have you back on the team.”

The look in his eyes says: _I expect it._

“Right,” Tobio says, and makes his escape.

  
*

  
He spends his night listening to his roommate’s snores and staring at the bright screen of his phone in the darkness.

Still no calls.

  
*

  
But a few weeks later, he gets one.

It comes late one night when his roommate is out and the dorm is silent. Tobio’s sitting at his desk, that week’s homework blurring before his eyes. He’d been half asleep when the call came; it didn’t stop him from snatching up his phone so quickly he’d knocked half his books onto the floor.

“Hello,” he says, breathless.

“Kageyama,” Suga-san says.

Tobio’s stomach drops somewhere around his feet, then comes up again along with his rising feeling of confusion. He takes the phone away from his ear and checks the caller ID. It _is_ Suga. He’d put in the number somewhere in first year, he remembers now. Suga’s along with the rest of the team. After the third years graduated, though, their contacts hadn’t seen much use.

He asks again, just to confirm.

“Yes, it’s me,” Suga says. “You’re still awake?”

“Um.” Tobio catches the numbers on his electronic clock out of the corner of his eye. Half past twelve. “Yes.”

“Good. I need to talk to you.”

Which is how he’d ended up in the coffee shop around the corner the next day with his former senpai across the table, and telling him everything.

Suga doesn’t say anything when he finishes, just cups his hands around his drink and stares at him, which is ultimately what makes Tobio realize exactly what he’d just told him and drop his gaze to the floor. They sit like that for a while. Tobio stirs his coffee, coughs a few times, and tries not to look Suga in the eye.

Eventually he hears an exhale and has to look up.

Suga smiles at him, but it’s a weary thing. He doesn’t look much older, Tobio thinks, even though the last time they had seen each other was a little over a year ago at a reunion Takeda-sensei had organized. Hair a little longer. More tired, maybe, but then again university tended to do that to people.

He brushes a strand of hair away from his face, catching Tobio’s attention with the movement, and admits, “I thought it would be something like this.”

Tobio stares.

“What,” he says, when he’s regained the ability to form coherent words, because— _what._

Suga shrugs, unconcerned. “I still keep in contact with some of the team,” he says. “Yachi, mostly, but Hinata too. And, well. Hinata didn’t tell me anything, technically, but anyone would’ve been able to tell that he was acting different. Even Nishinoya and Tanaka picked up on it—they suspected it first and told Daichi, actually, who consulted me, which is why I called Hinata in the first place.”

“ _What_ ,” Tobio croaks again. “How—”

“We’ve been worried,” is all Suga says.

Tobio puts his drink down on the table a little harder than intended. A girl nearby glares at him, but he doesn’t pay her any attention. “The _whole team_ knows?” he says. It comes out accusing.

Suga smiles apologetically. “Former,” he corrects, “and not everyone. None of your kouhai, for example. Or Tsukishima.” He pauses. “But maybe he just doesn’t care.”

The thought doesn’t exactly comfort Tobio.

“Okay,” Suga says eventually, after Tobio’s spent a sufficient amount of time trying and failing to glare a hole through the table. “I didn’t come just to tell you this, though. We need to talk—” _of course_ , Tobio thinks dully— “and I need to ask you something.”

He waits. Suga doesn’t disappoint.

“Kageyama,” he says. “What do you think of Hinata?”

The question doesn’t surprise him, exactly, since it’s Suga after all, but it’s enough to throw him off his edge because it’s not exactly what he’d been expecting. He blinks, twice. When Suga blinks back at him expectantly, he answers the only way he knows how.

“He’s my friend,” Tobio says.

The word is a little hazy around the edges when it leaves his tongue, especially with Hinata’s confession and the subsequent disaster of a few months still fresh in his mind, but Tobio thinks it still fits, somewhat.

Maybe.

Suga tilts his head at him, moves slow, languid. “Are you sure,” he says.

It doesn’t sound like a question.

But there’s a reason, Tobio thinks confusedly, that he’s said the word in the first place. If Hinata isn’t a friend to him, what else—who else would he be?

Then he thinks of the confession, and _oh._

When he finally meets Suga’s exasperated eyes is when he starts to think that maybe the statement runs a little deeper than that.

He tries to make sense of it. He’s never thought of Hinata that way, never really thought about anyone that way, but when he starts to entertain the idea from Suga’s prompting he can maybe see why it would make a little sense. Their bond on the court is infallible and rare. To an outsider, it might have looked like they’d known each other for their entire life. And sometimes—sometimes. Tobio feels that way too. Because it’s easy to, and because being by Hinata’s side is _natural_ more than anything, and because losing him over the break had hurt like ripping a chunk out of himself, not like losing a teammate. Not like missing a friend.

And then Tobio starts, because how long has he been like this without knowing?

How long have _they_ been like this?

Suga must have detected something from the look on Tobio’s face, because he puts some coins on the table and stands to leave. “Think about it,” he says, and smiles; soft, genuine. The sternness melts from his face like wax.

“It was nice to see you again, Kageyama.”

  
*

  
He thinks about it.

  
*

  
“Have you talked to him yet,” is the first thing Suga says when Tobio calls him back a week later, his fingers drumming against his leg in uncertainty and his textbook in his lap because he has an exam tomorrow and even his former vice-captain’s mom-disappointment can’t come above the horrors of geometry.

He squeezes the phone. “Was I supposed to?”

There is a very long pause.

“Well,” Suga says finally. “Have you at least thought about it?”

“Yes,” he says, because he has, and he’d stayed up for two nights then fallen asleep mid-lecture as a result.

“And do you know your answer?” Suga presses on.

He hesitates, then “yes.”

“Then why haven’t you talked to him yet?”

Tobio stares down at his textbook. Why hasn’t he? Because he doesn’t know where Hinata is, he thinks. Because he doesn’t know if he can approach him without Hinata punching him in the face. Because he’s only recently sorted all of this out, and it’s still buzzing around his head and he’s having a hard time really understanding it, any of it.

Because he’s a coward, maybe.

Tobio flips a page and grips it until his knuckles turn white. “He probably hates me,” he says.

“Probably,” Suga agrees. “But he’ll keep hating you if you don’t do anything.”

Silence.

“He won’t pick up. My calls.”

“I know.”

Silence, because what can he say to that?

Suga sighs and it carries through the line like a curl of air. “Do you still have your old contacts from first year?”

“Some.” He does.

“Look for Kenma. You remember—Kozume-san, to you. He’s rooming with Hinata right now for university. Talk to him. I think he’d like to speak with you, too.”

“Kageyama.”

“Don’t forget.”

Beep. The call drops. He’s left with the phone still at his ear, and the remnants of its radiating heat follow him to bed that night and burn.

  
*

  
He doesn’t forget.

(He almost wants to.)

He calls and Kenma picks up, listens. Doesn’t question him. Doesn’t say anything at all, other than a soft “oh” he almost misses at the end. Gives him an address. Gives him a chance.

Says, “thank you,” quietly, knowingly—steals the words from his mouth, a beat before Tobio presses the button to end the call.

  
*

  
That night he dreams. There’s sunset and dusk, the sun blinding and grass cool beneath heated skin. Broken words. Broken promises. Fingertips glancing and missing, a shouted lie and the sound of a jump; the sound of wings.

For the first time in a while, he does not dream of brown eyes.

  
*

  
When he wakes up, Tobio sends Kenma a message to let him know he’s coming, then showers and eats and does some homework then walks out the door at noon with eerie calm.

He feels blank, almost. Like there’s nothing on his mind.

The address Kenma had given him isn’t too far away, a nearby university that’s academically average but known for their strong athletics. It makes sense that Hinata would choose it. The distance is probably a coincidence—it hadn’t been on their list. Tobio breathes in the scent of musty rain and tries not to think.

Halfway there he gets a reply from Kenma when his phone buzzes in his pocket.

 _Don’t come_ , it says. _It’s Shouyou._

And under that is another address.

This one, Tobio recognizes, and his calmness evaporates like mist.

  
*

  
He makes it to the hospital by some miracle, pushes his way through the crowds of people and sprints up the stairs to the correct floor. The room number Kenma had sent him burns in his mind. Tobio doesn't even need to check his phone for it—just runs his fingers across each nameplate he passes and prays uselessly that this is all a huge mistake.

Then he stops.

Room 505.

The name below it is Hinata Shouyou.

 _So it is, then,_ Tobio thinks somewhere in the back of his mind, then breathes in shakily and pushes open the door.

It’s an almost empty room with a bed in the corner and a table beside it with some yellow flowers in a pot. A small crowd is gathered beside it, blocking most of the bed from vision. There’s Kenma. His black-haired friend beside him, Nekoma’s former captain. Yamaguchi. Someone who could only be a doctor, sitting in a chair with a clipboard that he’s not writing on.

And Suga.

Well, of course Suga, he’d have to come, Tobio would’ve expected him to—but something just doesn’t sit right with the fact that _Kenma’s_ contacted him out of all the people here, and even then it had been obligatory because of the planned meeting.

Tobio feels ice in his veins as he makes his way over.

And there’s Hinata.

 _He doesn’t look any different_ , is the first thing Tobio notices, which he then realizes is ridiculous because of course he doesn’t, it’s only been two months. Not hurt, either. Tobio feels a wave of relief that quickly turns into bemusement because...it’s strange. He doesn’t see any of the machines that he’d expect in a hospital. No nurses or assistants or other patients, either. There isn’t even anything at all on the table other that stupid pot of flowers.

“Um?” Tobio manages, because he doesn’t think he’s been this confused in his entire life.

All eyes in the room turn to him. None with surprise, he registers; though he himself takes a step back in shock because all of them look at him with such undisguised grief that it’s similar to a blow to the gut.

Except one pair, and they’re amber-brown and curious.

“Hi!” Hinata chirps. He smiles, wide and delighted. “Have you come to see me?”

“Um,” Tobio says again. He glances around, bewildered, but no one meets his eyes. Even the doctor is staring at the floor. “Yes?”

Hinata clasps his hands together. “That’s great!” he exclaims. “Did you bring anything special?”

Tobio blinks. He’s spent all day and night wondering what Hinata’s reaction would be to seeing him, and this one was decidedly not a possibility he’d considered. He looks over Hinata again, somewhat desperately. Still doesn’t see anything wrong with him other than the happy light in his eyes when he looks at Tobio.

Because it should definitely not exist.

“Kageyama,” Suga calls him, and his eyes are so, so sad.

Tobio jerks back, and—something’s wrong, something’s definitely wrong. The awful feeling in his gut returns again, relentless, chewing at his insides. His head’s spinning and the room suddenly seems too bright. Everyone around him looks empty and shattered and so helplessly _broken_ , and Hinata’s still smiling, and _what the hell is going on_?

Tobio snaps back to look at the bed. “Hinata?” he tries.

Wide brown eyes blink. The sunlight makes them look blank, changes them into solid gold.

He tilts his head.

“Who’s Hinata?” he says.

  
*

  
...

  
*

  
And he thinks the last time he sees Hinata Shouyou, it is in a room with blank white walls and the eerie sound of loaded silence pounding by his ear.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

He looks the same.

Tobio thinks this, over and over and time and time again. When he goes back into the room for the first time, when he introduces himself (for the first time because he’d never bothered to before), when he watches that bright smile and those shining eyes and feels his heart drop through the floor—he thinks this. And it’s ridiculous, because he shouldn’t. _Hinata_ shouldn’t. He isn’t Hinata anymore, doesn’t know Tobio or Kenma or his family when they rush in or even himself anymore, doesn’t _remember_. He shouldn’t still have orange hair and brown eyes, shouldn’t stand with the same short figure. He’s changed so much inside it hurts to know, but he looks the same on the surface, the same he’s always been.

It’s wrong. It’s so wrong.

(An accident, Kenma had said. A head collision and minor concussion, the papers had said. Amnesia and memory loss triggered by an accident and developed by emotional stress or turmoil, the doctor had said.

 _Because of you_ , Tobio’s mind had whispered.

And he knows, he knows—it’s right.)

  
*

  
Tobio watches with everyone in the room as the doctor speaks to Hinata, watches him handle the matter delicately like Hinata’s a piece of glass. He asks him careful questions to “determine the state of his memory”, he’d told Tobio and the others. The clipboard is in his hands and he’s looking at it this time.

Hinata answers simple questions like “what’s five plus five” and “what’s the capital of Japan”, then “what color is my shirt” and “what language are we speaking”. He gets all of them and the doctor hands him a pen and tells him to write “hello” and draw a cat. He does that too. Tobio’s starting to grow uneasy by the time the doctor puts down his clipboard and tells Hinata he did good, then warns him that the questions are going to get harder now.

“What’s your name,” the doctor asks gently, and Hinata pauses.

Tobio feels like he’s holding all the air in the world in his lungs.

“I don’t know,” he answers.

He releases it and watches Hinata’s sister, Natsu—the only one of his family who had insisted to stay—clench her arms and stare at the floor.

“You’re Hinata Shouyou,” the doctor tells him, still gently. He pronounces the characters like he’s sounding out the alphabet to a child. “Do you think you can remember that from now on?”

“Yes.”

“Can we call you that?”

Hinata looks pensive for a while, and Tobio almost expects him to shake his head, say _not everyone used to call me that_ , say _I remember now_ , but the only answer he finally gives is “yes”.

And it continues.

“How old are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What school do you go to?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is your mother’s name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where were you born?”

“I don’t know.”

Hinata looks confused through the whole thing, like he genuinely can’t understand why he doesn’t know the answers. There’s no realization dawning on his face, no frustration written in his features. Only confusion.

Somehow that’s worse.

The doctor tells him _it’s okay, you’re doing fine, Hinata-kun_ , and _this is the last question then you can rest_. Hinata nods and smiles like it’s the only thing he knows.

“You used to play a sport,” the doctor says slowly. “Do you remember what it is?”

Hinata blinks, and something seizes in Tobio’s chest.

If he’s going to remember, it has to be now. If he’s going to go back to the way he was. Out of anything in the world, volleyball would be the one thing that would make him remember. Tobio remembers, anyways, recalls the passion and love for the sport he’d first seen in Hinata, the undying dedication that managed to carry him to the top. He can’t forget that. Not this. Not volleyball.

Not the thing that has shaped his life so much and brought him so far, brought him to _Tobio_.

He watches Hinata process the question. Pause to think. He watches his hands suddenly clench the sheets of the bed, watches the knuckles pale, and thinks this is it.

But Hinata shakes his head. “No,” he says softly. “I don’t.”

The room seems to exhale.

“I’m sorry,” he adds, looking at his tight fists.

If he could, Tobio would have taken meaning in the apology. Taken hope. Taken in how the confusion had faded from his face. He would’ve thought of how Hinata would not could not give up like this, how he never learned how to give up, never stopped in the middle of the road without at least pushing with everything he is and everything he _was_ and everything they ever were—

( _Which was what, exactly_?)

—but.

Tobio does not do any of these things.

He just looks at Hinata, and thinks _who are you_.

  
*

  
“Who was I?” Hinata asks him quietly, one day soon after the accident, when the sunlight is spilling into his room from the window and across the bedsheets like radiant liquid.

Tobio freezes. He looks up, very slowly, from the notebook he’s meant to record the results of Hinata’s brief check-in into for the doctor, and stares. Hinata drops his gaze when he does.

“Sorry,” he says softly. Tobio flinches at the word. “I know you...I’m sorry. I just wanted to know.”

“Don’t apologize,” Tobio mutters. He finishes writing the last line and snaps the notebook shut with more force than necessary, then puts it down.

It’s been like this for a while now. Hinata’s still staying in the hospital, in the same room, so that they can monitor him and his symptoms. There’s no result yet on his diagnosis or whether he can actually remember, but the physical recovery from the accident has already been noted. It wasn’t anything big, he heard. A traffic accident. A bump with a car when he returned from his morning classes.

Which makes Tobio know all the more that he’d been the cause. _Emotional stress and turmoil_. What else could it have been?

He tries not to think about it too much.

People come to visit often these days, a mere week after the incident. Hinata’s family most of all, but old teammates from Karasuno—and therefore Tobio—and former rivals in their high school volleyball career frequent the hallway and waiting room now too. They take turns visiting Hinata’s room, talking to him, telling stories from the past in futile hopes to make him remember and leaving behind souvenirs and mementos from their old years when Hinata shakes his head.

Tobio is the sole exception. He comes often, as much as Hinata’s family maybe, but he never talks. He writes in the doctor’s notebook and organizes the gifts and flowers in the room and sometimes just sits and watches Hinata like a guard dog, but he never tries to speak to him. They’ve almost reached a silent agreement. Haven’t even exchanged words beyond necessary greetings, until now.

For Tobio, it’s been a sort of barrier, a way of hiding from the reality of the situation. He’s not proud of it, but it works. Most of the time.

Now, when Hinata is looking at him with flickering questions in his eyes, is not one of those times.

Tobio lifts the notebook again and wonders if he can pretend to write some more to avoid this. “I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask,” he says measuredly to the leather cover.

There’s a frown in Hinata’s voice. “Why not? You know me, right?”

 _Knew_ , he wants to correct. _I knew you._

“Yes,” he says instead.

“And I know that I knew you. We played...volleyball together. Everyone from school told me.”

Tobio takes a startled breath. “What did they tell you?” There’s dread coiling in his stomach; his barrier might break, after all.

The frown deepens. “Not much. Just that we played, and we met at a match in middle school then went to high school together.” He looks at Tobio cautiously. “You were my...setter.”

The word is so fragile, like Hinata’s not sure of how to say it, what context it should be said with.

“I was,” he says. Still staring at the notebook and Hinata’s still staring at him. A rush of panic suddenly heats his throat, because he doesn’t want this, whatever it is, because he doesn’t want Hinata to know and understand and _know_ and hate him all over again.

Tobio puts the notebook in his lap and flips it open to a blank page. “I was,” he repeats, “but we weren’t that close. Not friends. Just teammates. I didn’t really know you that well.” The words come out sharper than he’d intended, in short stabs that pierce the air like blades. He has to stifle the urge to take them back.

There’s a beat, then “oh.”

He gathers the courage to look up and there’s Hinata, looking blankly at him and seeming like he’s glowing from all the light in the room. He believes him, Tobio realizes. He doesn’t have the choice to do anything else.

The lie in his mouth tastes like sawdust and weighs like steel.

Hinata returns his gaze to the window. “I understand,” he says. “Thanks anyways, Kageyama-san.”

  
*

  
_And that’s another thing._

He dreams of brown eyes.

  
*

  
“He didn’t hate you,” Kenma tells him later, soft in the dark hallway, reading Tobio as easily as he would read opponents on the court. “He never hated you.”

Tobio could only look at him.

“He thought you hated him,” Kenma says, and he doesn’t meet Tobio’s eyes.

Tobio swallows. His voice feels thick and heavy and terrible on his tongue; it’s a battle to speak. “I didn’t.”

“I know.”

He takes a breath and doesn’t say anything, doesn’t say the words that threaten to break past the block in his throat, the words that are his answer. He doesn’t say what’s been burning on the back of his mind for a long time. He doesn’t say what he should’ve said when Hinata had confessed in the courtyard, or maybe when he’d laid on the grass with _fate_ running through his head, when he’d been promised to stand on top of the world, or even the very first time he’d looked at both of them as one on the court and thought _invincible_ , loud and clear and breathless.

He doesn’t say it, but Kenma’s eyes answer _I know_ all the same.

“He waited for you,” Kenma continues, softly, softly, but it feels like a million cuts on Tobio’s skin. “He thought it would take months, years. He was waiting for you.”

And Tobio hears it.

The _forever_ is unspoken, but.

It’s there.

  
*

  
When Tobio walks into the room the next day, clutching the notebook like a lifeline, Hinata’s holding a volleyball.

He turns at Tobio’s arrival. “Hey,” he greets softly.

Tobio puts down the notebook in a corner of the table—it’s practically overflowing with flowers and gifts, he’ll have to clean it up again soon—and stares.

Hinata hums as he traces a groove in the ball, eyes glued to his moving finger. He must’ve felt the incredulity in Tobio’s gaze because he speaks. “I used to play this, right? Yamaguchi gave it to me when he visited.”

“Yeah,” Tobio says. He looks at the curve of Hinata’s fingers cupping the ball, the gold of his skin against the swirling red and white and green. It’s familiar and aching, the rightness of it all crashing into Tobio like a tidal wave, and in that moment he thinks he hates Yamaguchi.

Because looking at Hinata like this, with the sunlight cutting shadows and shades across his face—it makes Tobio’s chest hurt and his breath stop in his lungs for reasons he can’t explain.

Hinata, oblivious, blows air into his bangs and puts down the ball. “Hey,” he says, and grins at Tobio like he’d been struck with a genius idea. “You’re a setter, right? You toss for the players.”

“Yeah,” Tobio says again. It comes out sounding like a question. He doesn’t have time to tack on _not anymore_ to the end of the word before Hinata grins wider in excitement.

“Show me,” he says.

The look Tobio gives him must make it clear what his answer is, because Hinata pouts. “Come on,” he begs. “I’ve heard so much about how I used to play but I haven’t even seen anyone handle a volleyball. I want to see.” He makes pleading eyes. “Show me?”

 _No_ , is his first instinct. But Hinata’s expression is fading from playfully imploring to something real and urgent, and Tobio realizes that he really, truly wants to know. He imagines himself from Hinata’s perspective—forgetting everything and remembering nothing, with all these people coming in and telling him things about himself, things he doesn’t know with no real grasp of anything he used to have—and is struck by the sudden nausea he feels. It can’t be easy, being Hinata right now. It must be anything but easy, but he smiles and laughs and welcomes these unrecognizable things and strangers claiming to have once known him into his life despite everything.

In the way of his character, Tobio thinks, the accident has changed surprisingly little.

_It can’t hurt, can it?_

So he relents, says “fine”, watches the glee and relief and anticipation cross Hinata’s face all at once, then he’s tossing the ball towards Tobio and he’s catching it between stumbling fingers.

It’s probably been too long. He hasn’t played volleyball properly since the loss to Seijou at the finals, save for the disaster of a practice at university, after which he hadn’t even touched a volleyball. Tobio’s not even sure if he remembers how to do this without a net in front of him, but he takes a careful breath and positions the ball above his head all the same.

Hinata bounces in his bed like an enthusiastic child. “Toss it here,” he demands, pointing to a spot in the wall just above the bed, then leans forward, expectancy lighting his face.

If he fumbles the toss, it could probably hit him. But Tobio’s never been anything if not reckless, so he tries to summon the pinpoint accuracy his tosses have always displayed, then throws the ball up and waits for it to fall.

When it does, he sends it streaking across the room.

 _Too fast._ It’s Hinata’s presence, maybe. He’s unconsciously done the toss for their quick attack back in high school just like he had at the university practice.

The volleyball blows past Hinata and thuds against the wall, then rebounds and rolls to a stop at the foot of the bed.

Hinata looks blank. His eyes are glazed and vacant.

For one terrifying second, Tobio thinks he’s scared.

But then he yells and practically leaps into the air. “What was _that_ ,” he wheezes, when he’s calmed down a little. “That was—wow— _so fast_.” Hinata turns to Tobio, his grin splitting his face. “I used to hit _that_?”

Tobio can’t form an answer to that, but Hinata doesn’t seem to notice. He just shouts in delight again and picks up the ball, then throws it to Tobio with such force that it’s an effort to catch. “Do it again,” he says, eyes sparkling. “ _Please_. I have to see that again.”

Tobio’s fingers tighten against the ball. He can’t tell Hinata that he’s already seen it too many times to count, hit it just as much; can’t tell him that he was the first one to ever, ever watch him toss and think something other than _reckless_ or _absurd_. He can’t because Hinata won’t remember, isn’t even the same person anymore, but when he’s looking at Tobio with stars in his eyes and calling for one more toss it’s hard to tell.

Tobio swallows around the sudden dryness in his throat and nods. Hinata quiets; there’s an intensity in his gaze that makes it clear he’s waiting.

He tosses the ball up again, glancing at Hinata out of the corner of his eye before focusing on the ball. Lower, lower, lower—

Tobio pushes, pushes hard, harder than he’s ever done since Kitagawa Daiichi and his estranged teammates—

Pushes _impossible_ —

And he’s there.

The colors of the ball swirl and blur in its path. There’s a whoosh, a jump, a chance.

Tobio sees wings.

  
*

  
_He’s fourteen and he watches a boy who craves victory like air fly across the court._

_He’s fifteen and there’s a suppressed memory coming alive again in the form of a soaring jump._

_He’s sixteen and he thinks, naive, that there is nothing else that matters besides the feel of victory in his veins, the taste of sweat on his lips._

_He’s seventeen and he watches again. This time there’s no rush of wonder, no shock, only familiarity and a burn of completeness inside his chest. He thinks they’re absolute. He thinks they could be on opposite ends of the universe and he wouldn’t want this feeling any less._

_Then he’s eighteen, and he’s only half right._

  
*

  
Hinata falls and hits the floor, spreads his arms and legs and laughs with pure exhilaration. He turns to Tobio, face alight. The ball crashes to the ground from where it’d been struck into the wall. There are still vibrations, ghosts of shivers running up his spine from the staggering force of Hinata’s spike.

Tobio cannot breathe.

Hinata laughs again, joy bubbling out of his chest. “ _Amazing_ ,” he gasps. “It was all— _waahhhh_  and—wow, and—” he looks up at Tobio and he’s radiant, he’s shining.

He looks like the sun.

“You’re incredible,” Hinata says.

 _You’re incredible._ Tobio freezes, mind spinning. _You’re incredible. You’re incredible._

_You really are incredible._

The breath catches in his throat.

He opens his mouth to say something, anything, but nothing comes out because he’s suddenly had all the wind knocked out of his lungs and it feels like he’s been thrown back three impossible years. He replays the spike in his head; flawless, breathtaking, as strong as it’s ever been. It’s the same he’s always known.

Hinata smiles at him, and for a moment the accident never happened, he never forgot, and they’re just practicing together like any other time they have before, and Tobio can believe that nothing has ever changed. Hinata’s expression is soft, thrown into warm shadow by the sunlight. It’s familiar and bright and _real._

The unexpected pain in his chest is suddenly, immensely sharp.

_It’s not. Not real._

_He still doesn’t remember._

_Still doesn’t know you._

Tobio’s perfect illusion falls apart. He’s thrown back into reality, and it hurts like frostbite, like poison, like a knife twisting in his side. It hurts like _being forgotten._

He stands abruptly. The pain is suffocating, cloyingly thick across his skin. “I have to go,” he says.

He runs and doesn’t take in the smile fading from Hinata’s face, doesn’t take in the confusion that replaces it, doesn’t hear the call of “Kageyama!” after him and doesn’t register the lack of the honorific. It must have been his imagination, but—in that one moment Hinata’s face had looked so content and so full of _love_ it made Tobio’s chest ache.

And it makes him scared, all over again. For and of himself.

  
*

  
The next time he visits, it’s only because he has to.

The notebook he’d left lying on the table is gone, no doubt picked up by one of the nurses, but it doesn’t bother Tobio in the least. It’s not what he’s here for. He carefully creaks open the door from where he’d been standing and peeking into the room, and quietly steps inside.

Hinata’s asleep, just like the doctor had said he was. Tobio closes the door and walks over until he’s standing over the bed, close enough to cast a shadow over the white sheets. He looks peaceful like this. The curtains are closed, but the sunlight filters through the thin fabric and paints the walls of the room in a mute orange-gold. It’s fitting.

Tobio presses his lips together for a second. There’s no time to wonder about the future, he reminds himself. There’s no point in thinking about the _if only_ s, the _could’ve been_ s. He did this to Hinata—he deserves to be forgotten.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Hinata’s sleeping face, and means it.

 _There_. Tobio owes him that much, at least, owes him an apology even if he’s too much of a coward to say it when Hinata’s awake. Truth be told, he could owe Hinata the world for all he’s done, but an apology is the very least he can offer. It doesn’t matter how sincere he is, how much regret and bitterness and pain he pours into those two words. It doesn’t matter if he carves them into his flesh with a knife. It won’t make up for anything, will never make up for everything, but it’s what he can offer.

And maybe he childishly thinks that it’s enough.

In any case, he’s done what he came here to do. Tobio allows himself one last long look. The most vivid memories of Hinata had always been with him facing Tobio with his figure a silhouette set in sun, but he thinks it’s appropriate, that what will soon become his last is one where Hinata’s in the light, for once.

There’s a lump in his throat that threatens to choke him, so Tobio turns and makes to leave.

Just as his fingers touch the doorknob, though, there’s a low voice.

“For what?”

Tobio stills. He spins around. Hinata’s awake and upright, sitting straight on the bed and frowning at him, eyes unusually fierce. The sun catches on them and doesn’t make the brown look blank like before; it makes them _glow._

“You’re awake,” Tobio says, mouth dry.

Hinata stares at him and his eyes look like fire. “For what,” he repeats. “You’re sorry for what?”

Tobio doesn’t answer.

“Don’t just apologize and walk out of here!” Hinata snaps at him. There’s something tense in his posture, a rigid line in his limbs that suggests his frustration and anger—though for what, Tobio has no idea. “You don’t come for days and then sneak in when I’m sleeping just to say two words and leave? At least give me a reason! At least _say goodbye_!”

“I wasn’t going to leave!” Tobio shouts at him, voice hoarse.

Hinata’s eyes burn. “Oh yeah? Then what were you going to do? If I hadn’t been awake, you would have walked out that door and never came back. You would have _disappeared_ ,” he hisses. Tobio’s shocked into silence, which is more than enough for a confirmation. Hinata glares at him and continues. “You say we barely knew each other, but you visit every day and run out when I hit a volleyball? What’s your _problem_? What happened that makes you so—so _scared_ of me?”

The argument dies in Tobio’s throat. He stares at Hinata, face red and eyes blazing, caught up in his rant.

_Scared?_

“What did I do,” Hinata says slowly, viciously, but there’s a break in his voice— “that makes me such a _monster_ to you?”

For all of Tobio’s stunned silence, the sentence is like he’s hit a switch. “You don’t _know_ ,” he spits, and watches Hinata flinch back at his words like he’d been slapped. “You don’t even know. You can’t—can’t know how it is, can’t understand what I’ve—” he takes a full breath and wills his voice to stop shaking. Hinata’s looking at him now, eyes wide, all the anger faded and gone; it makes Tobio feel incredibly small and pathetic.

He drops his eyes to the ground. “You don’t even remember,” he says quietly. His hands curl into fists. “You...forgot.”

The word sears his throat, hurts like a flaming truth.

But Hinata shakes his head. Slow. Reluctant.

_Real._

“I,” he pauses. Shifts. His eyes meet Tobio’s and they flicker like candlelight, like sky.

“I remember you.”

  
*

  
...

  
*

  
_Oh._

  
*

  
Hinata takes a deep breath then he’s talking, rushing through his sentences, saying things that start too slow and end too fast and make Tobio’s head spin so that they barely manage to pass his ears.

He can hardly hear over the white noise blanketing them both. He can hardly breathe.

But he does.

And it’s like trickling water, into his mind—steady and sure. Hinata speaks; he listens.

Tobio’s world builds itself together again, piece by piece, word by word, without him ever noticing that it’d fallen in the first place.

  
*

  
“I remember you.”

“Not everything, and not all at once. Not at all the first few days.”

“But there were bits and pieces, and things that kept surfacing, and somehow I knew they weren’t made up or just from my imagination or a dream.”

“They’re tiny. But I know them, and I know they’re real.”

“And it wasn’t easy, to understand.”

“I kept thinking back to that time I asked you who I was, and you looked at me as if the answer physically hurt you. I kept wondering if you’d lied about us to keep me from the truth.”

“I still don’t really know if you did.”

“People come in and they tell me things, but they never tell me enough about you, not even when I ask them, because they just steer me away. All I knew was that we played volleyball together. I didn’t even know how we played, I barely knew what volleyball _was_.”

“But I had to know, about you.”

“So I got Yamaguchi to leave me a volleyball and I asked you for a toss.”

“And the first time you did it it really was amazing, but it wasn’t right. It didn’t feel right. It was really really fast, and really awesome, but it still felt sort of...incomplete, like something was missing from it. So the second time I asked you to do it, I tried to hit it, because it was what you’re supposed to do with a toss. And I did. I did hit it. When I saw your face after, I knew it was a part of my life, something that was important to me before, something that meant almost the entire world.”

“It felt so right it _hurt_.”

“But then you ran off and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, because I was afraid I’d done something wrong, or that the rightness I felt wasn’t really right after all and I’d made a mistake.”

“I was scared. I still didn’t know who you were to me but I could see flashes of everything. I had some memories, I just didn’t know what they were, but I knew you were a part of them and I was scared that you’d leave me. _You_ seemed scared. After I spiked the ball you looked at me like I was something terrifying.”

“When you came in today after so long I was so relieved, I was just pretending to sleep so I could see what you would do, but you just said _I’m sorry_ and you were about to walk out and I knew you wouldn’t come back if you did.”

“I got mad. I still didn’t know what had happened between us but you were acting like it was something terrible, Kageyama. And you looked like you were blaming yourself for it, or that it was something that would hurt me if I knew, but I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t know _anything_. I thought that you didn’t have a right to just walk out of my life if you’d done something like that. I thought you didn’t have a right to leave when you wouldn’t even _tell_ me what had happened.”

“I thought I had a right to know.”

“I got mad, and then you got mad, and then you suddenly looked like you were about to cry and I felt horrible, really, so I kind of just blurted it out even though it was supposed to be a secret, even though I was only going to tell you when you told _me_.”

“And I was going to. I do remember. I’m telling the truth, I was planning on telling the truth, and I was hoping and wishing that you would too.”

“I still don’t know most of what they mean because they’re so small and so short and really just tiny tiny bits, and they hurt my head when I think about them too hard or try to understand them, but I still _remembered_. And I still had them, if anything.”

“I remember—”

  
*

  
He stops. Tobio’s taking in the words as fast as they come, as fast as he can understand, but Hinata just stops and there’s a sudden rush of panic in his gut because he can’t stop, he needs to keep talking, Tobio needs to listen and he needs to know he needs to _know_ —

And Hinata inhales, exhales, steadies himself. He keeps talking.

He keeps answering.

  
*

  
“I remember—”

  
*

  
“Flying.”

“Falling.”

“Something solid in my hand.”

“Something warm on my back.”

“Words and sentences that don’t make sense.”

“Jumping to catch a ball and the sun in my eyes.”

“Jumping to see from the top.”

“Wishing for wings.”

“Then thinking that I didn’t need them, if I already had the court beneath me, if I could already fly.”

“Yelling for _one more time_ until I couldn’t yell anymore.”

“Wanting something so bad I could taste it.”

“Wanting to win.”

“Feeling like I had.”

“Feeling like I could stand on top of the world, then a feeling of _I already have_.”

“Feeling like losing was worse than dying.”

“And that victory was tangible, like the only thing I’d ever known.”

“Feeling like I could do anything and I wouldn’t....forget this, wouldn’t take anything like this for granted.”

“Feeling like I wouldn’t want anything else ever again.”

“Feeling like this was forever.”

“Feeling alive.”

“Feeling complete.”

“Feeling loved.”

  
*

  
“Feeling _invincible_.”

  
*

  
Hinata pauses again and this time Tobio isn’t seized with the desperate need for him to continue, to go on. He almost wants him to stop talking. His heart feels like it’s about to explode, and he can barely see Hinata, he’s just a blur of orange and amber against a backdrop of sharp throbbing gold, a blur of colors and words and memories and _invincible_ pounding so loud and running so fast through Tobio’s mind he feels like he’s breaking.

But he doesn’t stop.

Because “and I remember you,” he says, and Tobio wants him to stop, wants him to lose his words, wants him to feel what Tobio’s feeling and hear what he’s hearing, wants him to choke on all the anguish that’s rising in his stomach.

He wants _him_. He wants everything so bad it’s stealing away all the air in his lungs.

_Why did I...?_

Hinata looks at him and there’s something darkening in his eyes, and it’s like he can still read Tobio’s mind even when they’re forced worlds and galaxies apart by the barrier of his memories. “I remember you,” he repeats, as if he’s afraid Tobio won’t hear, didn’t hear the first three times. As if his words aren’t cannons blowing apart Tobio’s head. “I remember you.”

 _I know_ , Tobio wants to say. _But what about?_

Hinata goes silent for a while. His voice is unbearably quiet when he says, “at least, I think it’s you.”

It sounds like a question, but Tobio doesn’t know the answer, so he can only wait.

“You’re in front of me,” Hinata continues, and his voice is so small. “I can’t see very well, because I think I’m crying. There’s pain but it’s not all physical. You’re standing below me.”

“There’s heat on my back but I don’t care. You’re just standing there. You’re not moving, not saying anything, but you look amazing because your entire body is under shadow and your eyes are so, so blue.”

“Then you’re looking at me, and you’re talking. You’re telling me to be strong. You’re telling me to _win_. And—” he huffs. “And I remember thinking that I want to, I want to win more than anything else, and I want to become that way because—you are. You’re so strong. So incredible it takes my breath away.”

Hinata’s voice wavers. “So...beautiful,” he finishes, like he’s not sure what the word means anymore, and drops his gaze to the floor.

Tobio’s not breathing.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he finds that he knows what the memory is. He tells Hinata so, if only to have something to say.

“I don’t care,” Hinata says simply in response. “I don’t care what memory it is. As long as...” he exhales. “As long as I can remember you.”

 _You,_ Tobio thinks. _You, not it. You, not me._

“Hinata,” he says. His voice sounds weak, breaking even to his own ears. “Why...”

There’s so many ways he can end that question he can’t even begin to think of just one, so he doesn’t bother and just leaves the word hanging.

Hinata licks his lips. “I,” he begins, and stops. Kicks his feet against the bed. Looks up, like he’s looking down from the edge of the world.

“Can we start again?” he says.

  
*

  
_He’s eighteen, and he’s half right—_

_**never right** —_

_and he’s falling._

  
_*_

  
“What do you mean,” Tobio says, and the words come out flat and harsh.

Hinata flinches but doesn’t falter. “I mean,” he says, “that I want to start over. I lost most of my memory but I don’t want to stop like this.” His eyes find Tobio’s; there’s determination in them, soft but strong. “I don’t want to lose everything else, too.”

For a moment Tobio wonders if he’s read the words the wrong way.

But Hinata’s voice goes light. “I don’t know what we once were, but. I want to start over.”

He’s not looking at Tobio.

There’s a sudden surge of _something_ in his gut, but before he can linger on it too much there are words stumbling out of his mouth, disbelief laced clear through the syllables. “But you don’t remember.”

Hinata snaps his eyes back up and they’re unreadable. “Don’t you think I know that?” he says, low.

“You don’t even know me anymore,” Tobio says. Because it’s true. Hinata doesn’t know him, barely knows him, and he doesn’t know _Hinata_. Not anymore. Not like this. Not like this, when they’re in a hospital room of all places, not when he’s asking Tobio for something he can’t even begin to comprehend or imagine.

In the silence that follows, Tobio adds quietly, “I can’t...do that.”

 _To you,_ is what he means, _again, all over again._

“Why not?” Hinata asks. His voice is perfectly even and his face a blank mask. He’s waiting.

Tobio opens his mouth to answer, to give him all the reasons why he can’t, but stops short. He could come up with a hundred but none of them make it past his lips. _I can’t do this again. I’m going to mess up. I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to do something horrible and you’ll hate me and everything will go wrong and this will repeat itself. You don’t know me anymore. I don’t know you anymore. I don’t deserve a new start. I don’t deserve it, after all I’ve done. I’m the reason you’re like this in the first place._

_I don’t deserve it._

They gather in Tobio’s throat, heavy and aching. He can’t bring himself to say any of them. Hinata’s still waiting, face neutral, but there’s something in his expression that’s creeping in slowly like an oncoming storm.

It’s hope, Tobio realizes. Hope. Nausea rolls in his gut because that’s wrong, he’s not the one that should be hoping for something like that, Tobio’s the one who needs to be forgiven and the one who has to apologize and he needs to give an answer _now_ so he ends up saying, “because you don’t remember”.

Hinata freezes and the hope leaks out of his expression like water from a faucet. He stares at Tobio for a while, and when it’s clear those are the words that have come out from his mouth and he isn’t taking them back, his face hardens.

“Why do I have to?” he says, and there’s steel in his voice.

“Why wouldn’t you?” Tobio retorts. The sentence tastes sour when he says it, cold and unforgiving on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t falter. All he can see is that trace of hope that had appeared on Hinata’s face and how _wrong_ it is, how much he doesn’t deserve something like that. “What’s the point if you don’t even know anything?”

“I know you,” Hinata says. It’s like a punch to the stomach. “I know myself. And I know what I want. Why do I have to remember for us to—”

And Tobio cuts in, fast and sharp, because he doesn’t want to hear the rest of that sentence, doesn’t think he can take it. “You _don’t_ ,” he says. “You don’t know me. You have no idea what I want. You barely even remember, only things that don’t make any sense or don’t mean anything at all.” He watches Hinata’s hard expression fall away and his eyes widen but doesn’t let himself stop. He keeps going, even if the words hurt his throat to speak. “You can’t just come into my life again and pretend nothing is wrong. We can’t just start over. Do you even know how you used to be?”

It’s a real question, but the way Tobio says it makes it harsh and severe, turns it into a sneer and a mockery. Hinata’s stunned into silence. He doesn’t say anything. Tobio huffs out a bitter laugh and says the last sentence with curt finality.

“I don’t even _know_ you anymore.”

Hurt flashes in Hinata’s eyes and for a second he looks so similar to the time after he’d confessed that Tobio feels the regret he’d been trying to push down climb up his spine. Then it changes to anger, and he catches himself feeling almost relieved before Hinata stands, whole body shaking with it, eyes a blazing inferno. He’s still shorter than Tobio by a long way after all these years, but even so he almost shrinks back at the fury in Hinata’s face.

“So _what_ ,” he snarls. “That’s the whole point of starting again. So I don’t remember. So I forgot. So maybe I lost everything I used to have. What does it matter? _Why_ does it matter? Do you need me to know everything that’s ever happened with us? Do you only care about those memories? Do you only want to live in a world where everything is perfect and wonderful and _I never forgot_?”

He takes a step forward, and if Tobio wasn’t frozen with shock he would’ve taken one back.

“I know I forgot. I _know_. Do you know how frustrating it is, how terrible it is, to have everyone you used to know tell you about yourself because you don’t know a thing? Do you know how horrible it feels when you have to hurt everyone around you because you don’t _remember_?” There are tears in his eyes again, and Tobio wants to run but can’t seem to look away. Hinata takes a shaky breath and continues. “No, you don’t. You can’t. But I do. I know how it is, and I don’t want it to go on. I can’t let it go on. No, I don’t know anything. No, I don’t remember much of anything, and I probably never will. But do I really have to know myself, know everyone, know everything to want to try and start over? Do I have to remember to _be able to live again_?”

Hinata’s voice breaks off at the end and he sits back down heavily on the bed. He wipes his eyes and something in his posture has changed; it’s not angry anymore, not defiant, doesn’t scream ferocity with every line of his limbs. It’s fragile and vulnerable. Tobio looks at Hinata, a small, trembling figure before him, below him, and feels the anguish he feels as if it were his own.

 _I’m sorry_ , he wants to say. He wants to tell Hinata that he doesn’t have to, doesn’t need to do anything. He wants to reach out and pull him into his arms, wants to let him cry until it’s okay again. He wants to be able to tell himself it’s alright and believe it. He wants to _make things right_ more than anything else on earth, more than victory or power or a feeling of wholeness or perfection or standing on top of the world, more than wanting them to go back to the way they once were because things can’t change, can’t turn back, won’t turn back no matter how much he tries, how much he gives.

And Tobio would give everything.

Hinata brings an arm to his mouth and his voice is muffled when he speaks again. “I remember you were important to me,” he says. His voice is so broken. “Isn’t that enough?”

Tobio doesn’t answer, couldn’t have even if he had one.

The arm drops and he looks at Tobio. His eyes are red and his expression is miserable, restrained, wrong wrong _wrong_. “Go,” he says. He closes his eyes. “Let me be alone.”

It’s a dismissal, more than anything. Tobio swallows. It’s the last thing he wants to do, but he opens the door and quietly slips outside.

  
*

  
_Isn’t that enough?_

_...Isn’t it?_

_Shouldn’t it be?_

  
*

  
“He remembered?” says Suga, whose name had lit up on Tobio’s phone immediately when he got home, who had waited for seven rings until Tobio picked up and spoken to him gently and carefully as if he _knew_.

Tobio’s mouth feels impossibly dry. “Yeah,” he says. His voice is hoarse. He’d already told Suga what Hinata had told him, but he feels the need to clarify, “just—some. Not much.”

Suga hums, and even when he’s not saying anything the concern radiates across the line like heated air. “But you didn’t want to start over, with him? Why not?”

Tobio stares down at his shoes. He hadn’t taken them off yet. Suga had called just as he was unlocking the door, and he’s still standing in the entryway of his home. “I felt like,” he starts, and has to pause to gather himself. “I didn’t think...I deserved it, after everything.”

“I can see why you’d think that,” Suga says quietly. “But even if you didn’t, don’t you think Hinata deserves it?”

There’s silence. Tobio can’t think. “He deserves better,” he finally says. It’s the truth, because he does—Hinata deserves better than Tobio could ever be. “All I’m going to do is hurt him again. It’s probably a good thing he forgot me.”

“But it’s what he wants to do, isn’t it?” Suga pushes. “It’s what he cares about. And you know what you want, right?”

He does. He’d found the answer a long time ago, known even longer than that maybe.

Suga pauses like his next words take effort to come up with.

“And,” he finally says. “Kageyama. Don’t you see—Hinata remembered by his own will and intent. It’s what he does best.” Tobio can hear the smile in his voice, fond and nostalgic for his former kouhai, then disappear to be replaced with purpose. “He remembered you, didn’t he?”

It’s not a real question; he already knows the answer. Suga continues.

“And if he did remember,” he says softly, “he remembered the good things. He remembered how you two worked together. He remembered how you brought out the best in him. He remembered how he felt when you and him were standing together on the court, how strong you were and how strong you made him feel.”

“He remembered you. So he didn’t forget. And he only remembered the good, not anything else, not anything bad or anything about the differences you two had or the obstacles you faced or any of your losses and fights. He only remembered the best. He only remembered _you_.”

“Doesn’t that say something?”

  
*

  
_Isn’t that enough?_

_..._

_...Yeah._

_It already was._

  
*

  
_Always has been._

  
*

  
The sunset is warm on his back, by the next time he goes out.

It hasn’t been long, objectively speaking, but it had felt like an eternity for Tobio—an eternity, not just three days spent staying in his home and replaying Suga’s words in his head. It hadn’t been easy, to sort it all out. It couldn’t have been. Some of it is still spinning in Tobio’s head, after everything, following him with his steps.

He’s not even sure where he’s going until the route becomes achingly familiar and he stops.

Karasuno High hasn’t changed much. The school buildings are still the same after three months, the green grass freshly mowed for a new school year. There’s an atmosphere around it that Tobio can feel—something heavy and pressing, loaded with memories and feelings and laughing words exchanged through the air. It sweeps around him like wind, and he stops for a while to take it in before making his way to the back of the buildings.

The gymnasium hasn’t changed, either. Tobio walks past the door to it and eventually finds himself lying in the damp grass with his face to the setting sun. It’s warm, and natural, and feels like home.

He’s breathing in the scent of fresh earth when he hears footsteps.

They stop behind him. Tobio closes his eyes, briefly, and turns.

When he opens them, he’s not even surprised to see Hinata standing there.

The same can’t be said for the latter, but there’s only a flash of it across his face before it’s gone. Then his expression is carefully blank. He tilts his head at Tobio—he’s out of his hospital clothes, wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. In front of Karasuno’s gym with the sun behind them, it feels almost normal. Like they’re just taking a break from evening practice.

Tobio knows better.

Hinata exhales and sits down in front of him on the grass, crossing his legs. “They let me out,” he tells Tobio casually. “Said the physical recovery was fully completed. I’ve been home for half a day now.” He leans back and reaches out to the sky as if to touch the sun, and Tobio is struck by a sudden memory of lazy questions and bated breath. He averts his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

Hinata looks at him and smiles, easy like it’s the only thing he knows. “To remember,” he says. “Natsu told me the address. What about you?”

Tobio runs through a barrage of possible answers before he says, “to forget.”

Hinata’s smile turns brittle. “You’ve thought about it, then,” he says quietly. “You’ve decided.”

Tobio watches him tug a strand of grass from the ground and crumple it in his fist. “I have,” he agrees. “And my answer is no.”

Hinata opens his fist and the blade of grass falls out. He stares at it as it lands, and his smile breaks in half and slides off his face completely.

Tobio steadies himself before saying, “no, you don’t have to remember.”

It’s almost funny how quickly Hinata looks up. A movement like that must have hurt his neck, but he doesn’t even flinch. His eyes are trained on Tobio. He’s waiting.

Always waiting, Tobio thinks, then: I won’t let you wait anymore.

He takes a breath. “You’re right,” he says, meeting Hinata’s intense eyes. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember everything. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know me anymore. If I don’t know you anymore.” The words come easier than he’d expected, and he keeps them coming like flowing water, finally releasing the weight on his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter if we can’t ever fully go back to the way we were, because we don’t have to stand on the court to be together. It matters that you’re willing to try again. And as long as you are, as long as you want to try—” he half-smiles and watches Hinata’s eyes widen. “I’m here.”

_I’m here._

He holds Hinata’s gaze, one, two, three seconds, then the blankness melts off his face and he flops over to bury his head into the grass. “You’re so _stupid_ ,” he says, muffled, and Tobio laughs in surprise. “Of course I want to try, idiot. I want to try forever.”

 _Forever_. It’s such an easy word for them, always has been. Tobio looks down at Hinata’s orange curls framed against the ground and thinks it’s fitting.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and means it.

Hinata raises his head. There are bits of grass and leaves stuck in his hair and a smudge of dirt on his face, but he looks radiant. “It doesn’t matter,” he tells Tobio. “I _was_ mad, but it doesn’t matter now.”

“I thought I didn’t deserve you,” Tobio admits.

Hinata scowls. “Didn’t you just hear me? It doesn’t matter anymore.” He pauses, then shakes his head and adds firmly, “anyways, that’s not for you to decide.”

“Right,” Tobio says. He watches Hinata start to smile again and suddenly has to blurt out, “I think I made you forget.”

Hinata’s face freezes. Tobio has about half a second to think _stupid, stupid, why did you have to say that, why did you have to ruin everything_ before he asks, “what do you mean?”

There’s no getting out of it now. Tobio breathes in and says, “before the accident, you confessed to me and I rejected you, and you avoided me for the entire break until we went off to separate universities. Then you got hit. The doctor said that the cause for your amnesia was only triggered by the accident, but had been built up by emotional stress. I was going to talk to you that morning, before Kenma called me to the hospital.” He says all this in a rush, because he’s afraid he’ll lose his courage if he delays it any longer. Hinata’s looking at him but Tobio can’t bring himself to look back. “I’m sorry, I should’ve—if only I’d tried sooner.”

It’s all in the open now. Tobio can breathe easy, and he thinks it might have been worth it even if Hinata’s going to kick him and leave and never speak to him again. At least, at the very least, there’s no elephant in the room anymore, no biggest _what-if_ that’s kept him up for nights before.

When he finally looks at Hinata, his expression is still. Then he bows his head over his arms, hair hiding his face from view, and starts to shake. Tobio feels his stomach drop and thinks _this is it._

He braces himself for the hit, for the scathing words that are sure to come—but they never do.

It takes a while of him blinking in confusion to realize Hinata’s shaking with _laughter_.

He finally controls himself enough to look up but when he gets a look at Tobio, whose expression must be the most ridiculous thing in the world right now, he starts all over again until he’s out of breath and wheezing, spread out on the floor. Hinata drops a hand over his eyes and lets out a breath, long and slow. “Oh my god,” he says, voice still choked with laughter. “ _Oh my god_.”

“What,” Tobio snaps. Hinata sits up, hand falling away from his eyes, and he’s grinning.

“That’s it?” he asks.

Tobio blinks, because— “yes,” he says incredulously. “Why the hell would I make something like that up, dumbass?”

It sets off another round of laughter and he’s forced to wait until Hinata finally gathers himself enough to form coherent sentences.

“I thought it was something terrible,” he explains, looking up at Tobio. “The way you said it, it almost sounded like you pushed me into the car accident yourself. I thought it was something that put my entire life on the line, and I was bracing myself for the moment you would tell me. I didn’t think it was _this_.”

“But I’m the reason you forgot,” Tobio says bewilderingly. “Why aren’t you mad? I caused this whole mess in the first place.”

Hinata shrugs. “Maybe,” he says. “And maybe if you hadn’t done anything I would have escaped that accident with minor injuries. But it doesn’t matter now, does it? It’s all fixed. It might not have been if I didn’t forget, so maybe it’s even better this way.” He smiles at Tobio, soft and without a care in the world. “Besides,” he adds quietly, “you’ve changed your mind, haven’t you?”

It takes him a very long time to realize Hinata’s talking about the confession. Tobio looks down at him, red-cheeked and brown eyes liquid and warm, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to answer, “yeah, I have.”

Hinata glows. He closes his eyes and it’s peaceful, for a moment, and Tobio thinks he’s fallen asleep, but then he stands up suddenly and yells, “race you to the gym!” then runs off.

Tobio’s stunned, but it’s only for a moment. Then he’s calling out “dumbass Hinata, you cheater!” but he’s grinning, and he listens to Hinata’s laughs and waits two seconds before chasing after him and—

And—

And it’s right, he thinks, it’s never felt this _right_.

Hinata’s not by his side, this time around. He won’t be on the court with him. He won’t hit one of Tobio’s tosses and turn to him with sparkling eyes and wide smiles. He won’t ever return— _they_ won’t ever return to the way they once were, all burning limbs and simple words and nights spent together practicing with victory fresh and fierce on their minds. They won’t ever be the same again.

And Tobio knows this. He knows this with a resigned certainty.

But it’s okay. They don’t have to go back to the old them. They don’t have to stand on the same side of the net to be one, even if it’s all they’ve ever known. They’re partners, after all, not only ( _not anymore_ ) on the court. They’re meant to be. They’re meant to _be_ , even without the context of teammates and rivals, they’re meant to be together through anything and everything and there’s nothing, nothing, nothing in the world that can ever hold them down.

For all the things that will never repeat again—

They can still be more.

And their past doesn’t matter, not when there’s a future before them that’s as bright as the sky; not when the electric exhilaration Tobio had first felt on the court with Hinata finally has a _name_.

It’s enough, he thinks, for them.

It’s more than enough. 

  
*

  
He catches up to Hinata in front of the gym. His back is to Tobio, posture straight, and he’s holding something in his hands. There’s shadows from the trees cutting across his figure, smooth and languid and relaxed.

“Hinata?” he calls.

He turns. Tobio’s gaze falls to his hands.

A volleyball.

Hinata holds it out. His hands grip it, firm, determined. He holds the ball out, and he offers it to Tobio.

Offers a chance.

“Teach me?” he says. “Again?”

This time, it’s Tobio with his back to the sun, the sky behind his fingertips, the world at his feet.

He swallows and nods. “Yeah.”

_Always._

  
*

  
And like that, they start again.

 

 


End file.
